Best Online Colleges in Montana of 2025

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University Headquarters (HQ) is an industry-leading, independent educational organization that provides independent college rankings using a proprietary formula to create first class, unbiased rankings. The team at University HQ strives to provide accurate and trustworthy rankings that highlight the best programs in Montana.

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Recently, the unemployment rate stood at 3.0%. However, it fell in the beginning of 2022 and the employment numbers rose from a low of 553.7 million people employed. No matter where those numbers end up, every year students consider whether or not they should attend college at the associate or bachelor’s level, or if they should just step directly into the workforce.

If you’re considering attending college in Montana during an upcoming school year, then you’re in the right place. There are plenty of educational options from all over the country if you are willing to move or attend through distance learning. However, those degrees offered in Montana are specifically designed to help you get into the workforce in your own home state. With connections to local businesses and knowledge of the local economy, this can make all the difference.

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Online Higher Education in Montana

The average tuition and fees charged by colleges and universities in the state are $5,377 for in-state students and $11,504 for out-of-state students. As for graduate programs, tuition and fees are $22,570 at the lowest and $31,335 at the highest.

Students living in Montana qualify for in-state tuition, but students may also pay a lesser amount if they qualify for participation in the Western Undergraduate Exchange program. This is a regional program meant to help students save money when they attend college within any other state participating in the program. The program includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawai’i, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, some US Pacific Territories and Freely Associated States, South Dakota, Utah, and Washington.

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The average cost of attendance at a Montana college is about $20,776 for in-state students and $26,902 for out-of-state students. The cost of attendance includes tuition, books, supplies, room and board, and other expenses of living. Graduate students’ costs are around $22,250 in-state and $36,900 if attending from out-of-state.

As for the total Montana student population, there are 450,687 students all together. Undergraduate students number 39,815 and graduate students 5,872.

Schools in the state enrolled 6,411 students who are in online classes only in a recent year. For students taking a mix of online and on-campus classes, their numbers were 23,259. This was out of 45,687 students total. Colleges reported 26,849 students in online classes, with 2,821 students taking at least one graduate course online.

Looking at attendance status, colleges in Montana reported a total of 31,630 full-time students. They also reported that 14,057 students were attending on a part-time basis.

Our School Rankings Methodology

Ranking colleges is a serious process. We rank online colleges according to several criteria which most online universities and colleges maintain annually. And, while numbers and percentages are objective and quantitative, other categories can be more subjective. We can’t decide if you want to attend a school with very small classes so you can get plenty of professor interaction or larger classes so you can have more chance for debate and friendships, but we can tell you what the student-to-teacher ratio is.

Factors used include admission, retention, and graduation rates, graduating salaries coming from alumni surveys, and many more. The cost of tuition has also become more and more important over the years, with tuition rising nearly every year. Data are collected from government websites linked to the Department of Education and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which provides data on the outlook of hundreds of industries and occupations such as business, psychology, engineering, and others.